What is RSS?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Its a technology that helps you to keep up to date with web sites and blogs like this with regularly changing content. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually. You ensure your privacy, by not needing to join each site’s email newsletter and the number of sites offering RSS feeds is growing rapidly. Instead of checking the site to see if there are any new items to read you can subscribe to the site and be notified of new content from within a top quality browser like Firefox or by using a dedicated ‘news reader’. In essence, the feeds themselves are just web pages, designed to be read by computers rather than people.

How do I start using feeds?

In general, the first thing you need is something called a news reader. This is a piece of software that checks the feeds and lets you read any new articles that have been added. There are many different versions, some of which are accessed using a browser like Firefox or Internet Explorer 7, and some of which are downloadable applications. Here is a link to more information from Microsoft on using RSS with IE7.